Research On Wattpad's Social Publishing Practice

Since the early 21 st century,the evolution of electronic mobile devices and the development of mobile internet technology began to promote new reading trends on a global scale.Social media,represented by Facebook,Twitter and YouTube,has attracted a large group of young users with its' fragmented,instantaneous and interactive characteristic.In this context,digital publishers are beginning to look for new business development models for the purpose of catering to users,and social publishing is one of the new ways to achieve the goal.Social publishing is a form of publishing in which publishers achieve content production,promotion and profitability based on interactive and open social network in the new media environment.From the perspective of the reading and writing of content,authors and readers have dynamic interactive communication behaviors in social publishing;From the perspective of operational methods,social publishing is not belonging to a specific business model,but can be practised in various ways.Social publishers,represented by Wattpad,offer more personalized creation and reading services to the public because of its' more diverse digital narratives and more convenient information interaction technologies.Studying Wattpad's social publishing practice activities has important reference value for exploring the developing trend of the publishing industry.Wattpad's social publishing activities are divided into two parts.One is the publication and promotion of Wattpad's publishing platform,and the other is Wattpad's profit exploration based on the publishing platform.Wattpad adopts five strategies to operate it's publishing platform:the self-publishing service based on "free creation + flexible copyright",the reading and writing mechanism based on "social interaction + open competition",the content production trend based on "catering to young groups",the model of autonomous management based on ‘official policy+volunteer team" and the promotion method based on "algorithm recommendation + individual marketing".In the promotion of the publishing platform,Wattpad adopts the brand marketing method of "on line + off line".In terms of creating a profit model,Wattpad has explored five ways of profit: advertising business,software business,video production,content publishing business and crowdfunding project.The Wattpad model satisfies the user's demand for interactive reading and writing,creative co-sharing,feeling empathy for collectivity and building reputation for themslves.In addition,Wattpad also meets the company's profit need of IP mining and development,brand co-construction and value-added.Finally,the Wattpad model also has problems,such as copyright violation,irresponsible content review and immature profit model.Through a summary analysis of Wattpad's experience and lessons,the publishing industry should pay special attention to four issues of the publishing activities:the socialized trend of publishing,the control of content and the management of the platform,the balance between data-driven profit and algorithm addiction,the problem of profit diversity and persistence.